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Village doesn’t want to overload new community development director

Konkoski hired

Konkoski

SARANAC LAKE — Village officials want to shield their new community development director from getting “overloaded” with too much work.

Jamie Konkoski was hired Monday to replace Jeremy Evans, who left the village last month to lead the Franklin County Industrial Development Agency. She’ll be paid $60,000 a year plus benefits.

Trustee Allie Pelletieri said he, Mayor Clyde Rabideau and village Manager John Sweeney interviewed the three finalists for the job. It was a “hard pick” after they narrowed it down to two, he said.

“Jamie understood where we are and understands where we’d like to go,” Pelletieri said. “She did a beautiful job at the interview and came out as the one we recommended.”

A native of Tupper Lake, Konkoski has been the program manager for the Saranac Lake-based North Country Healthy Heart Network for the past 10 years. She helped the agency win several major grants during her tenure, including one for more than $500,000 to pay for construction of sidewalks and promotion of walking and biking to school in Franklin County.

Konkoski is currently chairwoman of the village’s Parks and Trails Advisory Board, formerly the Healthy Infrastructure Advisory Board. She’s been involved in the planning process for the village’s parks, the development of the village Bicycle and Pedestrian Trail Master Plan, and a Complete Streets initiative, among other things. She also served on the village’s Comprehensive Planning Committee from 2006 to 2010.

Konkoski has bachelor’s degree from SUNY Potsdam and a master’s in Urban and Regional Planning from the University at Albany.

After she was hired unanimously on Monday, several board members said they want to make sure Konkoski isn’t given too many tasks, which they said was one of the challenges in Evans time as community development director.

The issue came up first during a discussion about whether the village should support St. Regis Canoe Outfitters’ application to the Cloudsplitter Foundation to pay for repairs to a Dorsey Street retaining wall and improved paddling access to the Saranac River from its property.

Referencing this project and a grant the village won to develop an arts and culture master plan, Pelletieri said he’s concerned about Konkoski “being overloaded right off the bat.”

“I want to make sure we’re not getting to supporting this in the form of staff or money,” he said. “She’s got a lot of catching up to do just to find out what grants we even have going. I want to give her a fair chance to get started.”

Trustee Paul Van Cott said the St. Regis Canoe grant application is through a private foundation. The village has no involvement other than a building permit it would have to issue for the work, he said. Konkoski may be more involved in the arts and culture master plan, Van Cott said, because that is a grant the village won, “and we have a stake in the success of that grant.”

Later, Trustee Rich Shapiro asked if there should be a process in place for village board members to seek Konkoski’s help.

“I think we’re trying to avoid some of the issues we ran into with her predecessor, where we would go into the office — and I was one of the major offenders — and make requests of the person,” he said. “They would probably feel obligated to say yes, and they end up with 10 pounds of stuff to do in a 5 pound work week.”

Sweeney asked board members to go to him first with community development proposals or requests, then he could gather information so a presentation could be made to the full board. If the board approves going forward, then he’d assign the work to Konkoski.

It’s grant writing season right now, noted Van Cott, who’s also chairman of the Saranac Lake Local Development Corporation. He said there may be a need for “surgical requests” for help from Konkoski to support grant applications from outside groups that would benefit the village.

Pelletieri said he thought the LDC is separate from the village, which should be reimbursed if it does any work for the LDC. Van Cott agreed that should be done if the community development director is showing up as an employee to assist the LDC.

“What I’m talking about, and this has happened more and more, we’re working as teams, as partners and bringing something to the table to benefit an application that will benefit the village,” he said. “That position has certain expertise that we don’t have. That’s sort of the village’s contribution toward a grant application to the benefit of all.”

“I like the team effort, as long as its legal, but I also want the LDC to realize they have to run it through John,” Pelletieri said. “They can’t go in there and interfere with her routine.”

Konkoski is expected to start work with the village sometime in the next few weeks.

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